Follow our live coverage via news alerts, tweets and this very blog as we cover the landmark 40th annual conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) June 8-10 in Fort Lauderdale. With some 2,500 infection…
Health officials in the United Kingdom are urging parents to get their children vaccinated against measles, which is resurging due in no small measure to vaccine fears caused by since discredited research linking the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) shot to autism. With a…
With the new Sydney strain of norovirus causing an increase in outbreaks in health care settings, infection control measures are critical to prevent transmission in hospitals and nursing homes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the following basic…
Health-care providers and public health practitioners should be vigilant for possible increased norovirus activity in the ongoing season due to an emerging new “Sydney” strain of the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Noroviruses are the leading…
As the nation faces the largest outbreak of pertussis in 50 years, the rate of vaccination of health care workers languishes at about 20%. By mid-July, 18,000 cases had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with…
In what is getting to be a familiar, tragic refrain, the improper use of single-dose vials has resulted in pain clinic patients in Arizona and Delaware acquiring serious bacterial infections that were “completely preventable,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. “Ultimately, ten…
Infectious disease epidemiologists are ramping up outbreak surveillance as tens of thousands of people from throughout the world come to London for the Olympic Games. Some 660,000 international visitors and 70,000 athletes and staff will descend on London for the Games, held July…
If you are unsure about any question dealing with a single-dose vial of medication beyond its strictly defined use, please assume the answer is ….No. A single-dose or single-use vial is a vial of liquid medication intended for parenteral administration…
Once thought of as shocking outliers, hepatitis outbreaks in ambulatory care settings related to failure of basic needle safety have become the numbing new normal. A recurrent theme in the outbreaks has been patient-to-patient transmission due to failure of health…
Drug shortages and lean economic times may tempt some to scavenge that remnants of doses left in a “single dose” vials. After a staggering series of hepatitis outbreaks over the last decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is…